Skiers and snowboarders will jam into their favorite resorts over the Presidents Day weekend and try to enjoy themselves despite heavy mountain traffic, bustling slopes, and excruciatingly long lift lines.
Overcrowding is a big deal these days, as the pastime enjoys a popularity surge, and as sales of Epic and Ikon passes spike. These multi-resort passes, available for as little as $700, are now honored in some manner by nearly every major resort in North America.
But not every resort wants to be part of this phenomenon, choosing instead to maintain a crowd-free environment.
Utah’s Powder Mountain, for example, limits daily lift-ticket sales to 1,500 per day at a cost of $95 per ticket. Guests enjoy access to a remarkable 8,464 square feet of terrain.
Said Derek Taylor, former editor of Powder Magazine: “For Powder Mountain to cap it at 1,500 daily guests, and leave money on the table like that to preserve the experience, that’s huge. They’re trying to progress, but doing it in a way where they’re not trying to blow it out.
“We don’t want Park City here. We don’t want that many people. Instead they said, no, we’re gonna keep this different. We’re going to let it be unique.”
Vermont’s Magic Mountain is another example. It began capping daily visits at 1,500 in 2016, and the small resort is not part of the multi-resort pass system.
The Epic and Ikon passes, however, are exceedingly popular because of the value they provide.
Vail Resorts, a public company that owns multiple resorts and created the Epic program, announced in December that it had sold 1.2 million passes for 2019-2020. That represented a 22% increase over the previous season.
But with value, sometimes, comes hassles.
For example, Crystal Mountain in Washington State recently halted the sale of single-day lift tickets on weekends to contend with overcrowding. The resort honors unlimited skiing for Ikon pass holders, and crowds simply became too large.
“It’s a very imperfect science, pairing demand with snow and terrain,” Rusty Gregory, chief executive of Denver-based Alterra Mountain Co., which owns Crystal, told the Chicago Tribune. “Each resort has to do what’s right for its conditions and its skiers.” (Alterra runs the Ikon program.)
The Montana and Wyoming communities of Big Sky and Jackson last winter were new to the Ikon program. Locals complained so vociferously about overcrowding that resort executives published open letters vowing to do a better job of managing crowd sizes.
It’s a precarious balancing act, to be sure. Several resorts now limit the number of days they will honor the passes.
Utah’s Deer Valley Resort, for example, allows Ikon pass holders to ski or ride only seven days per season. Telluride in Colorado, Sun Valley in Idaho, and Jackson Hole in Wyoming are among other resorts that offer limited use with multi-resort passes.
Colorado’s Arapahoe Basin actually quit honoring the Epic pass last year. Chief Operating Officer Alan Henceroth explained to Outside Magazine: “The ski area is feeling a pinch on parking and facility space.”
But seven months later the resort began accepting the Ikon pass on a limited basis.
Which brings us back to Powder Mountain, which will allow only 3,000 skiers and snowboarders on its slopes each day this weekend, if you count the 1,500 season-pass holders.
If that seems like a lot, consider that nearby Deer Valley limits its daily crowd to 7,500, and boasts far less terrain.
Said Ryan Byrne, a former competitive skier who from Los Angeles who is building a home on top of Powder Mountain:
“While [the multi-resort passes] are giving more people access, it’s also kind of ruining things for a lot of old-school skiers who just want to enjoy the mountain.
“It’s turned them into Disneyland, waiting in line for an hour to get one run. I haven’t waited in line here for more than three minutes.”
–Images are courtesy of Powder Mountain